


when you're born hell-bound

by theclaravoyant



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Discussion of Framework, Domestic Violence mention, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Vague S5 Spoilers, discussion of domestic violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 12:50:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13190454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theclaravoyant/pseuds/theclaravoyant
Summary: Fitz can't stop worrying about the trajectory his Framework experience has put him on, and what it all means for his future and his soul. Fortunately, he's with the one person in the world in perhaps the best position to allay his fears.





	when you're born hell-bound

**Author's Note:**

> This kept trying to force its way into my (much fluffier) [Secret Santa gift fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/13176900), so I decided to work it into something presentable as it gets at some of my fears and hopes for this storyline we're on. I hope you enjoy and/or appreciate it as is appropriate.
> 
> Please be advised there is discussion of themes of domestic violence in this fic (no actual occurrence).

“You’re up early.”

Fitz started, and turned toward the sound. It was Jemma, standing just beyond the treeline of this little clearing he’d found. She had her hiking boots on – laces still untied - under her pyjamas, and was frowning at him in concern. 

“I couldn’t sleep,” he confessed, and invited her out onto the hillock he had found. He’d watched the sun rise a few hours ago from here, and the sky was now a pale and cloudy blue, the sunlight a haze across it. Jemma jutted out her chin, as if to soak up the rays even as Fitz pulled her close and tucked her under the wings of his jacket. He kissed the top of her head, which he often did when feeling pensive, and Jemma’s attention dropped back down to earth. She turned to face him. 

“Anything I can do to help?” 

He shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. It’s just- you know, the usual. Existential dread. Dark side of the Force. That kind of thing.” 

“The Force.” Jemma snorted. “You make it sound like the Doctor is this… alternate personality you’re doing battle with in your head.” 

“Sometimes it feels like that,” Fitz confessed. 

Jemma lifted his hands from around her waist, and folded them into her own. 

“You know that’s not what he meant, right?” 

“Hunter.” It still hurt a little to think about him – it would probably never stop – but a sorry excuse for a smile touched Fitz’s lips. “I think he meant that it’s like what he did, or you did, or Daisy… you know, levelling up in Badass or whatever. It just doesn’t feel like that to me. You all chose to take up arms and– and fight against your demons. The Doctor _is_ my demons. I can’t fight him, he’ll kick my ass.” 

“I have to disagree with you there,” Jemma pointed out. “I had to defend people I love. Violence was the way to do that at the time, there wasn’t a lot of choice to it, and I may have taken to it better than I might have liked, but even you have to admit it’s been useful.” 

“That part, I know. I mean, I’ve hurt people, I’ve killed people, I’ve – I’ve done a lot of scary, violent things that I don’t regret,” Fitz agreed. “But this is different. This feels… out of control. It’s wrong, Jemma. I just know it.” 

He pulled away from her then, and strode back into the forest, itching to get away from her all of a sudden. It felt like the Doctor was a shadow creeping up the back of his neck, just waiting to take him over, and he was struggling to make the others understand that without sounding like a villain claiming possession; claiming brainwashing; claiming _it wasn’t my fault,_ when it was. He clenched his fists and stuffed them into his pockets.

Jemma, for her part, didn’t make the quip she’d been thinking of to lighten the mood about Fitz’s gut feelings and overdramatic antics. Nor did she remind him of the psychology of conscious and subconscious, or any of the several schools of philosophy that might have helped him. In truth, none of these things came to her mind in the moment. She simply followed him, ignoring the branches that _thwack_ ed back in her face and feeling helpless as she watched Fitz’s whole body bristle with anxiety. 

“Fitz,” she called, once she realised he didn’t know where he was going. 

He stopped dead, but didn’t turn around. 

“Fitz,” she repeated, softer. “Please. I want to understand what’s happening to you. I want to help. Come back to camp, have some breakfast. Talk to me.” 

With some effort, Fitz pulled his hands out of his pockets, and trailed her back to camp in silence. He sat by the fire as Jemma set it up, lost in his own head until she nudged his arm and pressed a cup of tea between his fingers. He took it, and she smiled encouragingly up at him. It hurt to see him so lost and in pain, but bringing him out here felt like a step in the right direction. Hopefully, they were about to make another. 

“I know, it’s not…” he explained slowly, trying to capture what it felt like in his head, and translate it somehow. “It’s not like a real… switch. I’m not Hulking out, or anything. That Dark… side, or whatever it is, it’s still me. I know that. But in a way, that sort of makes it worse. It makes it… my fault.” He swallowed hard, and clenched the cup, approaching the confession. “I couldn’t sleep last night because I had a dream that I was strangling you. I don’t remember why. I don’t even know if there was a reason. I was just so angry.” 

He kept his eyes on the tea, shaking slightly as his hands trembled with the nerves. Jemma bit her lip, trying not to make a sound. Trying to process what that must have been like, even as her hand gravitated up toward her neck. She remembered the Framework, as much as she didn’t want to – and so did he. 

“I woke up,” Fitz continued, “and- and you were there, sleeping so peacefully next to me like nothing happened. You were so beautiful, and all I could think about was what I did in there. To you. To – to make you kneel like that, and beg me, and I – I _shot_ you Jemma. I _shot you.”_

“I was your enemy,” Jemma reminded him, ignoring the tears pricking at her own eyes. She’d sorted this out long ago, rationally, in her head, and she was determined not to be pulled back under by the fear, or by the memory of those cold gunmetal eyes. She stared intently at Fitz’s face, keeping her attention on the man he was now: his own eyes full of emotion, and brimming with tears at the thought of having hurt her, even in a nightmare. “I killed your father, in there. You had every reason to hate me.” 

“Then why didn’t I _just_ shoot you?” Fitz returned. “Or break your neck. Or poison you. Why didn’t I have somebody else do it? Why did I feel the need to order you down on your knees and make you cry? What kind of sick bastard needs that level of power? Why make the situation so- so– “

“Loaded?” Jemma supplied. “I confused you, I humiliated you. It was revenge. You might have been a bit theatrical about it, but it was just revenge.” 

“It was _disgusting,”_ Fitz insisted. He choked up with an ugly, snotty sob before Jemma could object, and buried his face in his hands as best he could, trying to catch his breath and hide his face and not spill his tea all at the same time. Jemma rested a hand on his shoulder as gently as she could, and eased the teacup from his grip before he lost hold. Her resolve strengthened as his faltered.

“What are you saying, Fitz?” she pressed carefully. “That you abused me?” 

“That I _could,”_ Fitz clarified. “You had utter faith in me, even in there, and I used that as a weapon against you. Even after watching my father do the exact same thing – “ 

“That wasn’t _real -”_

“I still watched it. And I feared it. But I did it. And now I know I have it in me to do it again and I hate it more than I’ve ever hated anything in my life. _Anything,_ Jemma. Do you understand that?”

“I think I’m starting to,” Jemma promised. “I’m certainly trying to. And I’m sorry for what you’re going through. You’re a good man and you don’t deserve to be so afraid of yourself.” 

“How can you say that to me?” Fitz demanded, breathless, beating his chest as if he could rip the agony out somehow. “How can you believe that, after what h- _he_ did to you – knowing that he’s inside me, knowing that he’s part of me. How can you feel safe with me after that?”

“I love you. I trust you,” Jemma assured him. “And I know that you don’t want to hurt me. Look at yourself. You had a nightmare and now you can barely even look at me. You’re beating yourself up – literally. That’s not a man who thrives on the power of abuse.” 

His hand curled and lowered like a frightened flower and he looked at her with wide eyes. There were still questions on his lips. But at least he was no longer hitting himself.

“Fitz,” Jemma insisted. “I’m under no illusions that you don’t have an aggressive streak, or a dramatic one, and you shouldn’t be either, but that doesn’t mean you’re a Hydra ringleader who tortures puppies in his spare time! I promise. Not as a doe-eyed woman in love with you, but as your friend, and as an agent who has served by your side during the best and most difficult ten years of our lives. I promise, you are a good man. You are struggling with a violence that was trained into you by a life that you don’t even have, but I believe you can overcome it, and find balance.” 

Fitz shook his head. “I don’t want balance. If balance means embracing the Doctor, I don’t want it.” 

“I don’t think you can be rid of him entirely. He’s not a cancer,” Jemma warned. “You can’t cut him out, burn him out, or rip him out. You have to come to terms with him somehow.” 

“Not like this,” Fitz growled. 

“Then how?”

He clenched a fist, infuriated and stressed by her challenge, and Jemma felt a shot of fear run, ice-cold through her veins. She hated herself for it immediately, but a flinch was a flinch. 

Fitz stood up. She’d half expected her flinch to send him into a panic, and maybe it had, but he didn’t get as flustered about it as he used to. He paced the small space between her and the tent, massaging his hand like he used to even though his cramps were much more rare these days. 

“I didn’t ask for this,” he insisted, near frantic. “I did not train for this, I was not born for this. This comes from the memories of a complete bastard of a man, who I hate with every fibre of my being. It’s not a bloody _superpower_ , Jemma, I’m not finding the good in something potentially dangerous. You’re asking me to accept abusive behaviours trained into me by an abusive man and a para-bloody-Nazi organisation. To use them when I think it’s necessary. Like when, hm? Like when I get a little too curious? Like when my best friend is beaten to a bloody pulp and I think it’s worthwhile to _hit her again. MY BEST FRIEND- ”_

He reined in his voice and his hand movements, but the tears were streaming freely down his face now. He remembered more from the Framework than he ever cared to think of again and the fact that he’d spent so long in his own head about it, never daring to speak to the others, had only made it worse. 

Watching the anguish pour out of him in such raw form, Jemma couldn’t help but cry too. Between remembering what Fitz was talking about, and watching him tear out his own soul, and noticing the line in the sand he had formed while pacing and dared not cross – for fear, no doubt, of being close to her while this explosively angry – it was almost too much. 

“I beat _Daisy,”_ he continued desperately. “I tried to _kill you,_ I _tortured our friends to death._ I know I didn’t know them, or you, or whatever, but _I shouldn’t be able to do that._ And apparently, I did it all because I was as in love with Aida as I should have been with you. What would I do if you asked me to then, hm? And believe it or not I don’t actually _want_ to destroy the whole world to save your life. Which, knowing our luck, might actually happen one day - that’s a _real choice_ that I might _actually, non-hyperbolically_ have to face!” 

“… Fitz…”  
  
Jemma shook her head. It was all she could say. She could hardly breathe – her whole body felt numb. She was even a little bit grateful that she’d started this conversation sitting down, because she wanted to run but she was sure her legs wouldn’t work at this point. God, she wanted to run. Away? To him? 

Yet she could only watch him pace.

“And – and what kind of man would I be to let a woman with that mind, with those desires, control me?” Fitz fretted. “The Doctor was a horrible, _horrible_ man, and if he wasn’t _me_ , you would’ve let Ward take the shot, wouldn’t you?” 

Sharp eyes pierced through Jemma’s shaken numbness. She remembered pleading with Ward to save him. A torturing, murdering, scum of the earth Hydra crime lord with Fitz’s face. And Fitz’s soul, or so he seemed to believe. How astoundingly awful it must be to believe that.

“I…” she stammered, helpless. “I…” 

“Well?” Fitz curled his arms into his chest, gesturing to himself with such passionate contempt it made Jemma’s stomach turn. “ _I am me_ , so what guarantee do I have that you would stop me?” 

“Fitz!” Jemma yelped, her voice cracked with tears as the numbness fell away. She stood up – on shaky legs, but she stood. And jabbed a finger toward him for good measure. “ _STOP IT._ You are not that monster and do you know why? Because in there, you didn’t have a choice. Aida forced you down a path that brought out the worst in you because it was convenient for her, but you’re free of that now and you have a choice and you would _always_ choose not to hurt me. That’s why. You’d rather die than hurt me. Or Daisy. And as for the world? Well, I’m sure you’d make the right choice if it really came down to it and you have my blessing. I’m not worth the world. In fact, if you destroy the world to save me I shall be quite put out.”

Neither of them laughed. Or smiled. Or anything. 

Jemma clenched her jaw, trying to ride this wave of determined concerned fury until it’s very end before she softened. 

“You are not destined to be an abuser,” she continued, “whether your father was one or not. You’re not destined to fall down a slippery slope, back to the ‘Dark side’ or what have you. You and your _bloody_ fatalism Fitz will you just _think_ for a moment and _believe in yourself!”_

“That’s not what you said about Ward,” Fitz replied darkly. “Why am I different?”

There it was, the fury faded. Burnt out like a match in the wind. Jemma’s eyes scanned the snow for a moment, as she fought all the flooding memories back until she could remember one thing. Just one thing. 

“You want to know why I couldn’t forgive Ward?” 

“Yes. I do.”

“There’s a lot to it –“ 

“I know –“ 

“But I suppose it comes down to something you said.”

Fitz blinked, and the stormclouds in his eyes seemed to clear. He still had a heaviness, a sorrow to him, but the seething self-loathing had been knocked off kilter for just a moment. 

“You gave him a choice,” Jemma continued. “You said –“

“You can choose right now to be good.”

The words spilled from Fitz’s tongue as if he were right in the moment all over again. He remembered the fear in those words, and in watching Ward betray them, but he also remembered what he’d been hoping would happen. That Ward would put down his gun, sneak him and Simmons off the plane, give everything back and apologise. Come home, set it right, have dinner and be welcomed back into the fold – the prodigal son. It seemed so fantastical now, knowing what Ward had become, but the severity of that fork in the road was enough to give Fitz hope. If he could be a man as horrible as the Doctor, what lay down the other extreme? What about all the paths in the middle? 

“Ward knew what path he was walking down,” Jemma continued. “And you know the Doctor’s path now. Plus, Aida should serve as a warning about hidden traps along the way, too. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, isn’t that what they say? But I believe you can, and you will, choose to do good, and whatever role the Doctor does or does not play in that is up to you. I’ll support you if you want to pull out of the field, or even out of Shield and go work in a toyshop or something for the rest of your life. I don’t mind if you never want to raise a hand against anyone ever again. But I also know that we’re fighting a good fight here and a little extra firepower wouldn’t go amiss. It’s up to you. Not me. Not Aida. You.” 

With her last words, she took three great steps toward him, and he was so transfixed that he barely moved except to hold his breath when, at the end of it, she put a hand over his heart. Face streaked with tears, Fitz blinked down at her, hardly able to believe the tender touch and how aggressively he’d been denying it to himself for so long.

“You have no idea how much I want to believe that,” he whispered. 

“One day,” Jemma promised, “you will.”


End file.
